Today’s consumers expect a unified brand experience, whether they’re shopping online or in person. That’s why omnichannel marketing matters. Omnichannel marketing is the seamless integration of every channel or customer touch point. The goal of any omnichannel strategy is to create a consistent experience across digital channels and physical stores, giving consumers opportunities to discover and engage with a brand — and as many options as possible to make a purchase.
For established companies with large marketing budgets, omnichannel strategies might include curbside pickup in reserved parking spots for items purchased online. It could also mean a mobile app that lets you prepay, order, and collect rewards from your phone. Omnichannel means putting the customer first and leveraging the power of data and personalization to create better user experiences.
Smaller ecommerce businesses can also reap the rewards of omnichannel marketing across their own channels. You don’t need physical stores or mobile apps to take advantage of omnichannel strategies that help grow your brand and drive sales.
We asked marketing expert Jeremy Way of Power Digital, a Buy with Prime Partner, to share some of the key tactics for building an effective omnichannel strategy.
1. Know your customer
“Meeting your customer where they are is incredibly important,” says Way, who specializes in marketing across multiple channels to grow brand awareness and revenue for Power Digital’s clients. “Understanding your audience and tailoring your offering to specific touch points is crucial, because every channel is different.”
“You always want to start working backwards from the customer,” he says. “Who is your customer? Where are they? What do you need to say to them, and how do you need to show it to them?”
For Amazon sellers, that usually starts with keyword research to kickstart search advertising and maximize SEO product pages. “That’s a key element to understanding your audience, what they’re talking about, what words are they using, and what they’re searching for,” Way says.
2. Cover the whole funnel
Being clear about your brand story and understanding who your audience is allows you to broaden your efforts across the marketing funnel. Find the right balance between upper (e.g., brand awareness) and lower (e.g., repeat customers) funnel marketing to cover all your bases.
“Once you know exactly who you are as a brand and what success looks like, you want to start layering in paid media, PR, influencers, and paid social advertising at the top of the funnel,” says Way. These should complement your ongoing marketing efforts such as paid search, organic social, and email marketing. “By going further up the funnel to build awareness, you can then start to convert those customers deeper in the funnel.”
3. Pay close attention to brand consistency
“You want to tell a cohesive brand story across all of your channels, but make sure your messaging is tailored to the audiences in those respective channels,” counsels Way. “In terms of an umbrella strategy, the themes for your brand should remain pretty much the same for all of your content, and then it’s just a matter of tweaking it from there to target specific channels.”
For example, when making content for TikTok, it should map to the format and expectations of TikTok users – it’s not just a matter of reposting a branded video across different channels.
That strong brand consistency also applies to something as simple as pricing. “When you have a multi-channel offering,” says Way, “pricing parity is really important, because if a customer is looking at a product that’s $50 on your site but $35 somewhere else, it can devalue the brand and turn customers away.”
4. Embrace TikTok and Meta
Way says that right now, he’s most excited about the huge potential for TikTok and paid social ads on Meta. “I think TikTok is an incredible tool for building brand buzz and awareness,” he explains. “While the cost of promoting your brand on TikTok is similar to other paid social campaigns, casting a wider net with a tool like TikTok is a great plan if your audience is on the platform.”
You can use paid social to send customers directly to your site to make purchases, or to product pages on your Amazon Store.
“The more money our clients spend on Meta, TikTok, Google or other channels driving traffic to their Amazon Store, the more efficient their search advertising gets, because we’re helping them create more brand awareness and more branded traffic across sales and engagement channels,” says Way. “As brand awareness grows so does branded searches on and off Amazon.com, and traffic from branded searches tends to convert at higher rates leading to more efficient return on advertising spend (ROAS).”
In short, as Way explained, merchants can use awareness-raising advertising channels like paid social and Google ads to generate brand buzz, turn that buzz into shopper interest, and lead shoppers to their Amazon Store or Buy with Prime product pages on their site.
“Our goal is to help drive growth for our clients, but one of the benefits we’re seeing with driving sales on merchants’ ecommerce sites is that they get access to order and customer information for Buy with Prime purchases that they can use to create remarketing campaigns and provide customer support,” noted Way.
5. Use email offers to drive traffic
“If you’re launching a new product or running a sale, one thing that’s really effective is using email as a promotional vehicle to drive traffic to your site,” Way explains. “Another benefit for merchants using Buy with Prime is that they can use customer email addresses to build email lists that they can use to drive traffic back to Amazon.com for product launches and events like Prime Day. Moreover, merchants can use Amazon attribution links and the brand referral bonus program to track conversions and get money back on every order.”
Way noted that the message ‘get free 1-2-day shipping when you use Buy with Prime’ is a message that resonates and can help drive clicks to merchants’ product pages on their site.
6. Use Amazon DSP to fuel the funnel
“Amazon DSP is one of the main things I’m recommending to my clients right now,” Way notes. “In terms of maximizing brand awareness and online sales, Buy with Prime offerings, and Amazon.com sales, it’s one of the best tools we’re using to drive positive impact for our clients.”
With Amazon DSP, merchants can use Amazon shopper data to direct shoppers back to their site to see all of their Buy with Prime products. “The best part,” noted Way, “is that our clients can use the customer order data to learn about customer behaviors, which allows us to then remarket to them later.”
7. Get your media mix right
“You want to prioritize the highest volume and growth opportunity channels first,” Way says. That means focusing on the proven drivers of sales across your channels.
While the media mix will depend on the merchant and product catalog, Way says, that in general it’s wise to focus “40 to 50 percent of your budget” on top of funnel brand awareness traffic campaigns. You can then start to engage customers down the funnel where direct ROAS is more efficient as we target higher intent customers.
Ultimately, you want to design a promotional calendar that drives users to purchase on channels that align with your brand’s growth goals. When it comes to leveraging retail media, Way says, “You always want to make sure you’re spending money putting your ads and brand in places where you’re going to interact with your ideal customers.”
Discover more tips on elevating your marketing using Buy with Prime.
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